The sudden illness of the leader of the opposition has called for a truce in an election campaign in all but name which has been ratcheting up since September. Everybody has wished him a speedy recovery. Nobody wants to be seen to be hacking away at Alfred Sant, the public persona, while the physical Alfred Sant is laid low by ill health. It is not so much the merit of the political class which sets itself a limit but that of a population which would not stomach political business as usual in such circumstances.
It does seem hypocritical to be humane to an adversary whose plans and ambitions one has opposed and thwarted by every possible means for years on end. His worst political enemies have no choice: better to be suspected of hypocrisy (nothing new) than to become a self-confessed monster of inhumanity.
Most people are genuinely affected. Those who can never be classed among his sympathizers or supporters are also showing and feeling sympathy for him. Cast as the principal focus of their political apprehension, he is suddenly revealed to be only human, very human indeed. Their natural instinct for compassion is provoked, to a very great extent dissipating the effect of months and years of demonisation.
It is a disaster for the PN spindoctors: all geared up to raise the tempo in the final run up to a first quarter election in 2008, they are obliged to pull back, regroup and rethink their strategies. An early election would be seen to be bad PR by not giving Dr Sant sufficient time to recover and return to the fray. The blizzard of ridicule and invective has to be stopped.
This may have significant consequences on the cohort of new voters who seem to be the only element that is consistently responsible for changes in government. Hammering away at Dr Sant’s image and keeping him a figure of contempt may have been expected to deprive him of the degree of coolness necessary to secure a segment of young neutrals more than likely to vote for change by default.
We need only wait a little while. The PN spin factory will certainly find a way around its difficulties and surprise us all with its creativity. It is endowed with real talent for creating virtual reality and blessed with an attentive, all-forgiving audience: the range of possibilities is almost infinite.
Timing the election remains a dilemma. Anything after the end of March brings in the effect of price hikes over a wide range of consumer goods as well as the debacle over hunting in April. Anything from here to end March could seem like a desperate measure to steal a march on Dr Sant as he valiantly struggles to get back into stride.
Dr Sant himself may be of assistance. His entourage will encourage him to climb back into the saddle as soon as possible, not only to do battle with the ancestral foe but also to discourage any discussion of a political succession on the eve of an election. This is an MLP dilemma: allowing any hint of leadership vacuum to be created is dangerous, a return to business as usual too early could be just as dangerous by allowing the PN to return to their customary tone and even to consider a return to their original strategies on the timing of the election.
Whatever happens, Dr Sant can no longer be tagged pure evil in spin and slander. Still, his faults and defects will not be glossed over and his own past actions or failures will not be erased from memory but the mounting demonisation we had every reason to expect in the coming months will have to give way to something else.
It suits me fine. Perhaps we can become as grown up as children who read Roald Dahl instructions on the identification of witches. Sticking to stereotypes may be a dangerous self-deception. Our list of suspects must be expanded to include those who cast themselves as “sweet and nice” in order to gain our trust to do us harm. The concept of a good looking witch is a valuable acquisition for any child. Why not for grown ups too?
With Dr Sant demoted by fate from the invidious title of pure evil, we stand a better chance of realising that there is no such thing at all. It is never really that easy. If our greatest menace sported horns and a long tail, we would all be fine. Of course we can have no further use at this point for Roald Dahl’s tips: no politician should be eliminated simply for wearing pointy shoes, for having an itchy head nor for having a strangely coloured tongue, even if it does happen to be blue.
In my book, colour has nothing to do with it but there are some acid tests. First of all, for people who stand as candidates in an election, rather than attempting to become dictators by force of arms, democratic credentials must be up to scratch. It rapidly eliminates at least two thirds of those presently in parliament who approved the change to the constitution which creates two tiers of citizens: those whose votes will be weighed with utmost care to produce perfect proportionality and those whose votes will not be fully weighed in, no matter what happens.
Pure evil takes on a different meaning at this point. It becomes evil posing as pure. Of course strict proportionality is an excellent democratic quality. It becomes less than pure when it is applied to some and not to all. Those who palm it off as a universal salve to our electoral ills are not without taint. None of them. Did any MP vote against or abstain? Not even the sweetest and the nicest?
With that criterion alone, many would be reduced to voting those in their favourite political party who were not asked to vote on constitutional changes, the new faces. There will be dozens of them in the next election and not without good reason. Their function is to sponge up No 1 votes from people who cannot bring themselves to vote for established candidates who have disappointed them bitterly. The new candidates will seem very sweet and very nice especially when compared to their colleagues who have been wheeling and dealing, U-turning and S-bending all over the place. That is the very reason that they will swell the lists.
They seem pure but they whitewash every evil great and small. By standing as candidates, they endorse all that has been done. They perpetuate the status quo. They lend themselves to a process which gives the status quo a new lease on life. At least the battle weary candidates stand before us showing all the signs of their passage. The new faces invite us to believe that they have nothing to do with all that has aroused our ire. They lull our resentment, they bewitch us far more than those who have offended us.
The question is do we want a change and I do not mean do we want to flip the omelette? Going from a Blue one-party government to a Red one-party government brings a change of the guard, a change of the clique at the helm without even a major change in the mix of financiers of the one party in government. The names and faces may change but the system will be precisely the same.
A mere 2,500 of us voting Green in any one of the thirteen electoral districts can bring about a change far more profound than can be hoped for by the hundreds of thousands who will put their vote elsewhere. It will no longer require the serious illness of a principal political figure for us to be reminded of our humanity. We can hope to begin to forget the serial demonisation of whoever leads the other side. We will begin to develop our critical faculties to higher levels driving the whole political class to compete more on substance and to rely far less on stereotypes devised by their backroom boys and girls. Only ordinary voters can bring about such a change. Politicians are their product: every combination of pure and evil performing at the highest or at the lowest levels of decency, honesty, consistency and democracy according to their fateful choice.
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